Barley helping rev up camels

Turns out that Saudi Arabia has to import fuel after all.

The world’s leading oil exporter is buying barley from Washington farmers to feed camels and sheep raised by the country’s famed Bedouin tribesmen, who have raced camels for thousands of years.

The Saudis prefer the white barley grown in the Pacific Northwest and have been an important customer in the past. Yet during recent times, Saudi Arabia has either grown enough of the grain for its needs or bought much of it elsewhere.

Call this year the return of the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia just purchased 165,000 metric tons – or, in more digestible terms, 7.6 million bushels – of barley at record prices, according to federal trade statistics.

Though it pales compared with oil, the shipments of commodity feed were expensive.

Barley prices have historically lingered in the range of $80 to $90 per metric ton. On Thursday the grain best known for making beer fetched $258 per metric ton.

“This is just crazy,” said Mary Palmer Sullivan of the Washington Grain Alliance, which oversees the activities of the Washington Barley Commission.

“You bet farmers are smiling.”